Toby Mottram is wrong to claim that we should intensify farming to keep prices down (UK needs 'mega farms' to keep food prices down, say experts, 13 November). This ignores the scientific evidence from the US, where large-scale intensive farming systems have become the norm, showing there are real risks to human health from mega farms because of their routine use of antibiotics. There is also new evidence from the Netherlands, where a strain of MRSA was found more frequently and in higher concentrations in the air within 1km of intensive pig and poultry farms. The UK's chief medical officer recently stated that the problems of antibiotic resistance in humans means we are facing a human health crisis, and that this is linked in part to antibiotic use in intensive livestock farming. This was raised at the recent G8 meeting.

The solution is not to create huge-scale, intensive, indoor livestock operations that threaten our landscape, farming and rural communities. Large-scale industrial farms may be able to produce food a little more cheaply in the short term, but we risk ending up paying a high price in terms of the loss of antibiotics that save millions of lives, to say nothing of the cost to the animals themselves. We need to eat less but better-quality meat, from farming systems that respect animals and allow them to enjoy natural behaviours.Emma HockridgeHead of policy, Soil Association

• Despite high levels of support from the public purse, our current food system is leaving growing numbers in food poverty and is leading to widening inequalities in health. It is also exerting a heavy toll on the environment and preventing many farmers from receiving a fair price for their produce. Rather than further intensification of livestock farming, we need a resilient, diverse approach to food and farming. We need an approach that will halt and reverse the decline in all the things that people love about our countryside: plentiful wildlife; a varied landscape; farm animals enjoying life out of doors; and fresh, seasonal, local food which can be bought at fair prices, while providing a reasonable livelihood for the people who produce it. Farming and food are not just issues for academics and vested interests – we all have a stake in getting this right. The first step is moving food, farming and the countryside right up the political agenda, and reconnecting people with where their food comes from, and how it is produced.Sue Armstrong-BrownRSPB, Dan CrossleyFood Ethics Council, Sue Dibb Eating Better, Vicki HirdFriends of the Earth, Tim LangCentre for Food Policy, Jeanette LongfieldSustain, Paul WilkinsonThe Wildlife Trusts

• Your article states "only 2% of dairy farms keep their cattle indoors all year round, compared with as many as 90% in the US". Having seen first-hand the terrible impact of mega dairies in California on the environment and on farmers trying to make ends meet, I can say that following the US down the road of intensification and ever-larger indoor only dairy farms would be a huge error. In the debate around feeding our growing population, we should be very clear that the consumer only picks up part of the bill. Someone, or something, has to pay the price for cheap meat and dairy products and all too often the unsustainable burden falls on the environment and the animals that provide them. We must be more effective at putting food in people's mouths by reducing food losses and wastes; by getting farm animals off human-edible grain and fishmeal and feeding them on grass, forage and food wastes; by returning to mixed farming which restores soils and by avoiding the over-consumption of meat and dairy.Philip LymberyCEO, Compassion in World Farming

• Last week the headlines were about Brits and our wanton wastage of food (Report, 7 November). We slaughter approx 1bn animals each year – most are farmed in fetid sheds. Animals suffer and die for us to eat yet each day we trash 1m eggs, 1.5m sausages and 6m glasses of milk and the equivalent of 86m chickens are trashed each year too. This week we have "influential farming experts" telling us we need even more intensive livestock farming to "keep food prices down". No doubt so we can trash even more animals without a financial care.Sara StarkeyTonbridge, Kent